About Freakin Time Yahoo Gets Nimble

About freakin time that Yahoo gets nimble.  It is obvious that this move was made internally around the peanut butter manifesto launch.  Nice touch from Terry Semel by leaving a blog post (he wins me over with this even though a handler probably wrote it).  I haven’t read all the massive posts on Techmeme but it’s clear to me that Yahoo needs to turn up the heat because the market is in transistion.  If Yahoo doesn’t get nimble they will fall down hard on the pavement.  Sot this is a good sign.  That being said lets see them make some good moves right out of the gate.   I like how they are breaking down the org.  I’m a big fan of simplicity and decoupling key functions.  The key to success is how cohesive will those functions be among themselves.  I’m curious to see how the functional heads handle it.

What I’d like to see is how Yahoo’s competitive strategy will overlay into this.   I’m sure we’ll be talking about this at PodTech for some time.  Yahoo has a lot of work to do to match Google.  To me it’s a big culture issue.  Google breathes and lives the new model of computing and user consumption across their entire culture.  Can Yahoo do the same?  We’ll see.

Here is what I left on Terry Semels blog…I like how you are breaking down the org.  I’m a big fan of simplicity and decoupling key functions.  The key to success is how cohesive will those functions be among themselves.  I’m curious to see how the functional heads execute.  I have a comment on what you said about hiring key talent.  I think the only way to gain speed in getting new talent is to acquire it fast.  Also I’d suggest developing media differently to use a long tail concept focus on the torso not the head. Build your programming around torso content rather than competing with established content producers in the ‘head’.

Good luck with the new org